Skip to content

Wilderness of Waves

Sailing Solo in Search of an Endless Sunrise

  • Home
  • About
  • SPONSORS
  • Sailing Videos
  • DONATE
  • Blog
  • Juniper’s Journey
  • PODCAST
  • Press
  • Sunshine & Salt
  • COMMERCIAL WORK
  • CONTACT
  • NAUTICAL TERMS

cropped-p1090489_small.jpg

http://wildernessofwaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/cropped-p1090489_small.jpg

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious cropped-p1090489_small.jpg

DIVE DEEP

  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Patreon
It’s winter here and the whole atmosphere is wet with fever. The pressure drops. Water falls. Life absorbs and amplifies in bursts. The paradise of flowers blossoms. Palm trees, rainbows, morning glories, thorns. I wander into blue lagoons lit by moondrops. I follow meadows to their edge and back. I bathe in a fluttering of emerald. Touch me. Touch me not. Touch me. Turtles swim under my boat looking for jellies. And the dragonflies are all hot to trot, they do the reverse cowgirl mid-sky, wings flapping, eggs forming. Did you know female dragonflies fake their own death to avoid having sex with aggressive males? They’ll just freeze, fall out of the air, and lay limp on the ground. I must start doing that to avoid aggressive things, like hurricanes and lightening and blue giants. My face when the sun is setting after a hard day of sailing. I’m all, “Baby, please don’t go!” 🌙 My new favorite thing do to at anchorage. I call this pose Fish Corpse. Right after this I tried some mermaid maneuver that landed me face first in the water. It felt good. I’ll call it Splash. Last night I sailed through the wildest lightning storm I’ve ever done seen. The thing was so big that my friends on an island 60 NM away could see it! Most of the jazz stayed up in the sky, but I saw seven bolts shoot out of the clouds and straight down to the ocean, electrifying the water around me. I don’t know how many fish got electrocuted… ten, ten thousand? Anyway, I didn’t know what to do, so I threw a reef in the mainsail and just went down below and prayed my guts out, Psalm 107:30, in case you were wondering. The sun was long gone and the nearest harbor was still 20 NM away. I made it there by midnight, lightning chasing me the whole way. The anchorage was empty except for an unlit catamaran that I almost hit. By 1:30 AM I fall asleep, fried and frazzled. Thirty minutes later a longboat comes and starts banging on my hull. I go outside in a daze. A fisherman is demanding that I give him a blanket. I don’t understand. I am alone. Freaked out. It’s the crack of night. I just scream a bunch and think about objects I can grab to scare him away in case he doesn’t go- like the fire extinguisher next to my left knee- he finally leaves. When I wake up I row to shore and sneak my way into a hotel buffet, then go to see my friend Mere. This is me and Mere’s mom dancing to a song about cannabis. It was on her playlist. A whole lot can happen in twelve hours. Cruising around the Fulaga lagoon in Holly’s dinghy. It was blowing 15 to 20 knots & we were flying & we broke the rudder, but we had a blast. Hi, I’m Olivia. Three summers ago I sailed my 34 ft. sailboat, Juniper, solo across the Pacific Ocean. I’ve been cruising ever since. California, Hawaii, French Polynesia, Fiji. You couldn’t pay me to live on land, for me there is no better home on earth than the sea. When you’re trying to dry your laundry but the sea keeps spraying you down. Do you dream about living on a sailboat and crossing an ocean? I grew up in Arkansas, where a muddy river is as close as you can get to saltwater & when I was a kid nobody told me that I could become a captain and live among the waves if I wanted to. I became possessed by the idea of living on a sailboat and circumnavigating after I read the book “Maiden Voyage” by Tania Aebi. After that, I read every book I could about sailing and shipwrecks and sea monsters, I took sailing courses, I delivered boats from one country to another, I crewed for offshore races, and I talked to every person I could find that had crossed an ocean solo. I think talking to people helped me the most. I want to help you achieve your sailing dreams and create a home among the waves! I do live monthly Q&As for Wilderness of Waves Patreons, where you can ask me anything your heart desires! 💕 Up the mast, fixing the lazy jacks that busted the day of the 55 knot blow. They broke while putting a reef in. A lot of people turn up into the wind to put a reef in. I don’t, I’ll be damned if I turn more into the trade winds when it’s blowing stink. I stay on the point of sail that I’m at. If I’m close to the wind, I blow the main sheet a little, if I’m off the wind, I sheet in the main as much as I can to take the pressure off of it, then I drop the reef in. During this instance, it was a bit chaotic and I sheeted in, while my friend turned 20 degrees into the wind, so our actions counter-acted each other and the lazy jacks broke beneath the pressure. This singlehanded sailor is still working on her communication! 😉 Nautical Twilight This batfish has been living under my boat & when I go underwater and wiggle my fingers at her, she swims straight to me. 💕 Finger Leather Coral

SAIL ALONG

Listen to a Humpback Whale Sing!

Receive a Message in a Bottle

Join 972 other subscribers
Create a website or blog at WordPress.com